The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (10 page)

If only he had been able to see more, things might have been different. But there were limits to their Third Sight, and Darinor had hidden his tracks well. Though Htomah had spent countless hours in the scrying chamber, the renegade Entient wore a cloud against such intrusions, and could thus be observed only in the presence of another. Focused primarily on Torin, Allion, Marisha, and a handful of others, Htomah had evidently missed the clandestine meetings with Evhan and other Illychar. Even as the infestation spread to Thaddreus and others within Krynwall, Htomah and his brethren had no real idea that Darinor himself was behind it. Only near the end, upon Torin’s return from Yawacor, had they come to realize the ominous truth.

By then, the others viewed it as but one more setback in a series of escalating events. Had any number of these dreadful occurrences happened all at once, Htomah was certain that his fellow Entients would view the matter as he did: a catastrophe that demanded their personal intervention. Instead, they had conditioned themselves little by little to accept each new loss as it came their way. Darinor an Illychar, Torin killed, the Sword stolen, Torin possessed and now wielder of the Sword once more…At this point, Htomah could scarcely imagine a singular tragedy severe enough to convince his brethren of the peril they faced.

Nor was he fool enough to wait for it when he might be able to do something to prevent it.

“And what do you intend to do, exactly?” Quinlan asked him.

Htomah bristled at the thinly veiled mockery in the other’s voice. “I will find a way to counteract the renegade Darinor’s ruthlessness—as well as this latest disaster concerning the Sword.”

“A curious strategy, given the cost of becoming a renegade yourself.”

Htomah ceased leafing through a set of his journals, dropping them into a drawer and slamming it shut. “You think me helpless now, do you?”

“I do not believe such a vague plan to be worth expulsion and exile.”

“Hence the difference between us, my friend. For I am not so concerned with personal cost as I am with the cost to this world and those we oversee—and yes, even to all of you, my brothers of this order. It is all at risk, and if, through some small sacrifice, I can help to preserve it, I will.”

“I should like to think, at the very least, that you had a more specific task in mind.”

Htomah frowned and resumed his bustle, putting things in order while gathering those few small items he felt might be of use to him in his journey. He was not certain how to interpret that last statement. Was his fellow Entient—one of the few sensitive to his cause—offering to join him should he be able to chart a logical course for them to follow? Or was he merely trying to trick Htomah into revealing his intentions so that it might be easier for the others of his order to thwart them?

“Do not concern yourself with me or my plans,” he replied finally. “Maventhrowe has forbidden me human contact. If I can, I will abide by that decree, and perhaps earn leniency as a result. Though, I stress again, reinstatement to a doomed order is not my foremost concern. I shall do as I must.”

He approached his friend, tossing a handful of tiny pouches into his satchel and cinching it shut. Quinlan’s features tightened thoughtfully—defensively, perhaps. Else he might have been trying to determine if what Htomah had shared with him could be considered a clue.

Either way, the moment of final choice was upon them.

“Do you intend to alert the others?” the elder Entient asked his friend bluntly.

Quinlan looked positively torn, then shook his head bitterly. “As you say, it is no business of mine.”

Htomah marched past, then stopped to place a hand on the other’s shoulder. “If this is farewell, I shall miss you. Try not to think ill of me.” Even to him, the words sounded hollow and inadequate, but they were all he had.

“I will continue to keep an eye on events in your absence,” Quinlan offered. “Will I be able to look in on you?”

Htomah came to a stop before the chamber portal. “I think not. Not for a while, at least. Perhaps when I am ready to attempt a return.”

With a wave of his hand, the stone that filled his doorway vanished, clearing the way for his exit.

“I will also do what I can to persuade the others of the necessity of your course,” Quinlan assured him, “should it be within my power to do so.”

“It will not. But I thank you for your kindness. Be well, my brother.”

“And a safe journey to you, my friend.”

Htomah nodded, glancing once more about his private chambers. His next step carried him into the hallway, where it felt as though he had already left behind all that was familiar, and entered the unknown.

N
IGHTMARES.

He had lived them before. So many, in fact, that he could scarcely recall the life he had known without them. The battles against demons and dragonspawn. The coming of Darinor and the Illysp—which he himself had unleashed. His journey to Yawacor in search of the Vandari, slipping from one conflict to the next against wizard, witch, warlord, and worse. The return he had not really wanted to make, forcing him to leave behind those he had grown to love. An unbroken string of trial and tribulation, death and disappointment, culminating finally in the loss of his dearest friend. By the end, he’d been only too willing to escape these nightmares and the world that had spawned them.

And he had.

And would now give anything to go back.

This isn’t happening
, he told himself. A litany he had been repeating for hours as he rode east through a once-familiar forest, drawing after him an ever-increasing brood of Illychar. A feeble denial, like the daylight during a sun’s eclipse. But it was his only ward against madness, his only hope of bringing this nightmare to an end.

He had even believed it, for a time. When the blanket of darkness had been yanked away, and his physical senses returned, he knew himself to be dreaming.
Death will not be cheated
, she had warned him, and he had accepted it as truth. Having willingly paid its price, he knew that his awakening could not be what it seemed.

Nor was it. Though his senses had returned, he no longer commanded them. His gaze, his movements, his expressions—none obeyed him, but rather were forced upon him, as if driven by the will of an unseen influence taken root within. At some point between his life and his death, something had gone terribly wrong.

He had realized soon enough what that meant.

So he had resisted it, telling himself that it couldn’t be, willing himself back to slumber and comforting darkness. But Thaddreus and the others would not let him go. They spoke to him as if he were someone else, and he heard himself respond in kind. He had fought for the words
he
wanted to say, but there was not enough left of him to do so. His tongue, like the rest of his body, was no longer his. He was nothing more than a consciousness, a soul, a living essence. Whatever the name for it, he was but a shadow of his former self. Enslaved
by a coil over which he had once held dominion. Chained to a nightmare of his own making.

Then the rape had begun. Had he the capacity, Torin might have wailed at the vile intrusion. He knew nothing of the other’s thoughts, yet could feel its scathing infiltration of his deepest heart and mind—had shrieked soundlessly as the creature laid bare his knowledge and experiences and the emotions that went with them. A few of these he had managed to hide, those he had clung to most desperately. But the remainder—nearly all of what had shaped him in life—he’d been compelled to share with the parasitic entity that had seized control of him.

Shame. Fury. Indignation. And his only recourse was to endure it all.

This isn’t happening.

And yet it was, Torin realized, no matter how fervently he denied it. He’d had plenty of time to consider it during the long ride east. A living nightmare like all the rest—the worst yet, perhaps. But railing helplessly against the truth did not make it a lie. He was Illychar, a prisoner in his own body, abhorrent to himself. Already, the savagery of his actions was beyond anything he had believed himself to be capable of. Nor could he fully absolve himself by blaming it on his parasitic companion. Part of him had reveled in the killings, in the sheer strength and brutality of them. Part of him had been all too happy to maim and torture Thaddreus for separating him from the Sword for even a short while. Had he not been so conflicted in how he felt about his own actions, perhaps he would have been able to put a stop to them.

And how much worse lay in store?

It would have been better for all had he been buried alive. That’s what this new existence felt like anyway. Incapable of movement. Incapable of speech. Trapped in a state of utter helplessness, emptiness, and fear.

In either case, Allion should have burned him rather than buried him. For who else would have returned him to Diln? Who else would have had both the cause and opportunity to bury him in that grove beneath his life’s tree? Such foolishness could only be Allion’s. The man believed so staunchly in the specific tenets of his parents’ faith. Surely, the Ceilhigh would not have rejected Torin in the afterlife simply because his mortal remains had not been properly consecrated and laid to rest. And even if they had, and his soul been left to wander, would that not have been preferable to this?

Nevertheless, his frustration was not with Allion. On the contrary, it gave him his one ray of hope, knowing that Autumn—Cianellen, she had called herself—had kept her word. With his death, Torin had bought his friend life—as it should have been. And if anyone could devise a way to stave off the Illysp, to discover and expose any inherent weaknesses, it would be Allion.

Besides, would he have acted any differently? Though his faith in the ritual demands placed upon departed souls was not as strong as his friend’s, he had risked much to preserve Allion’s body in those tunnels, when it would have been easier to destroy it by fire and carry on. He might have done so had he taken the time to consider the potential consequences, rather than refusing to
accept that his friend was truly dead. Then again, he might have done exactly what Allion had so obviously tried to do for him.

Not that such questions mattered now.

He broke free of the forest as a fog-smothered dawn seeped over the eastern horizon. A crisp breeze greeted him, blown down out of the Whistlecrags. Coupled with the winds of his steed’s passage, it caused his body to shiver. Rather than hunker against its brush, however, he felt himself rise in the saddle as if welcoming the sensation. A smirk came to his lips; evidently, his controlling self felt somehow invigorated.

He supposed that it was. After eons of craving, it likely took pleasure in any feeling whatsoever. For Torin, it was but one more level of suffering: aches he could not rub, pains he could not soothe. His Illychar self, he had thought, was simply ignoring them. It was not. It was reveling in them.

Ahead, the road curved, skirting the eastern edge of the Kalgren while veering south toward the Parthan border and the city of Laulk. But just as Torin was supposing that to be their destination, he jerked his reins to the left, cutting off across the open range so that he continued to head directly toward the mountains. He glanced back. The Illychar rallied from the woods continued to follow in packs and strings. Torin felt only mild surprise at their ability to keep pace. As elves and goblins, they were as fleet afoot as any horse. As Illychar, their stamina seemed without fail.

The terrain roughened noticeably, a rugged flatland peppered with bits of stone and fields of wild grass. At this reckless speed, his horse was sure to catch a foot in an animal hole or else go tumbling down a hidden ravine. When that happened, he was liable to shatter his own neck and paralyze his other self along with him. He knew he should hope for just that, yet remained terrified at the prospect.

But the Illychar he’d become showed no hesitation whatsoever. He drove his mount as he drove himself—beyond thirst, beyond hunger, beyond pain—without any regard for his body’s normal, physical limitations. A vessel to be used, that’s all a coil was. It needed no maintenance in a typical sense; since it was already dead, it required neither breath nor water nor food. Traumatic injury could destroy it, yes, and the parasitic spirit within. But Illysp were ruled by the primordial sense that only the strongest, most savage survived. Restraint, in most any circumstance, was tantamount to weakness.

That was how Torin had interpreted it from Darinor, anyway. And thus far he had seen nothing to suggest otherwise.

Aside from their overall scheme of conquest, of course. If Torin understood correctly—and he was not yet certain that he did—then their latest foray into this world was based very much on the principles of restraint. Instead of outright slaughter, they had relied greatly on manipulation and subterfuge. Rather than kill him and steal the Sword straightaway, the renegade Entient who had served as the Illysp’s leader had held his kind in check while sending Torin in search of those whose powers might be used against them. A plot whereby any such powers would be delivered directly into Darinor’s—
and thus the Illysp’s—hands. In the meantime, the mystic had been carefully positioning armies on both sides for the war to come. Only when Torin had learned that the Vandari and their talismans were no more had the bridled Illychar forces been set loose.

How much patience must that have taken? he wondered. How much more terrible would their wrath be now that it was finally unleashed?

By the same token, what else might Darinor have lied about? Little, it would seem. For had he done so openly, he would have risked being exposed had Torin returned with an army of Vandari magi in tow—those who shared a full knowledge of the original Illysp War. Clearly, however, there were things Darinor had neglected to tell them. But were these omitted truths cause for hope or even greater despair? And either way, how might he help to reveal them?

A ridiculous question, given that he was now one of the enemy. For if Darinor, with all his knowledge and power, had failed to resist or overcome the Illysp spirit within, then what chance did
he
have?

It was a crippling thought, so he pushed it from his mind. Having surrendered his denial, he had only this to cling to: the grim determination to contribute somehow to his people’s deliverance and his own destruction. Impossible as it seemed, he would find the answers first, and then figure out a way to act upon them. Anything less was too terrible to contemplate.

As if attuned to his stubborn will, his other self looked back to check again on the packs of Illychar serving as entourage. Not the dozen or so he had fought in the tunnels beneath his home city, but scores. Though driven from Krynwall, they bore no sign of that defeat, only a feral urge to take up the struggle once more.

The struggle that he, as wielder of the Crimson Sword, had promised them.

Torin felt his courage wilt and his own mouth smile in response. Bereft of hope, he rode on.

A
ROUND MIDMORNING, HE BEGAN TO
receive some of his answers.

He rode slowly now, fighting steep mountain trails riddled with clefts and gullies and rockslides. He had broken his first horse some time ago—had simply left it behind for the wolves and vultures while taking one of the trailing remounts. This second steed, too, had eventually crumpled beneath his weight and received the same unceremonious treatment. At that point, he had heard himself order—amid growls of disgust and derision—that the animals be kept fresh, for he still had a long journey ahead of him.

The sun had burned away the fog, yet he still felt the chill here upon the slopes, at the upper edge of the treeline. His breath clouded before him. His army of perhaps a hundred scraped along behind. The rim of yet another valley climbed precipitously ahead.

A pair of Illychar emerged from the rocks in front of him. Ogres. Massive and misshapen, with slack jaws, walnut skins, and glazed-eyed expressions.
Sentries of a sort, Torin decided. There had been others along the way. He ignored these as he had the rest, riding forward with an imperious air. They growled, but let him pass.

Then the trail crested and the valley beyond was revealed. He should have gasped at what he saw, but grinned instead. An army of thousands filled the sun-baked cauldron, an Illychar swarm that dwarfed any Torin had seen thus far. Some lounged about. Many others were fighting—and in some instances, even killing—one another in combat exercises. They turned as one to greet him, restless all. A reserve force, he thought, though he could only guess as to the exact motives of his predatory spirit and its kind.

Without any discernible reason, he paused then, there upon the valley’s rim, to gaze upon the eastern horizon. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A hazy gray smudge colored the air far beyond these jutting cliffs of the central Whistlecrags, darker than the sky above. The Skullmar Mountains, Torin realized suddenly, that monstrous range of peaks that lined Pentania’s eastern coast and dominated her shores. A pale glimpse only, yet for some reason, it held his stolen gaze in thrall.

And then he was moving again, kicking his weary steed to hasten its descent. As those below continued to rise up, he felt an urge to look back and make sure his entourage still followed—as if their paltry numbers could even begin to dissuade this new group from attacking. Instinctive as it may have been, the effort was in vain. Evidently, his Illychar self did not share his concern.

Though the creatures ahead fought toward him in an eager press, they were restrained by a number of others who acted as commanders and overseers among them. It surprised Torin that this would be so, though perhaps it should not have. They had obeyed Darinor, had they not? And Thaddreus. And now him. They were creatures of an unruly, individualistic nature, but they were not fools. Each still had a life to defend, and a common goal to achieve. The true infighting, he supposed, would not come until all enemies were dead, and a collective supremacy assured.

A forward contingent detached itself to stand before the main body. Torin aimed his steed in its direction.

As he neared, the group kept growing larger—not in number, but in size. Giants, he recognized, having met the creatures recently in his battle against Lord Lorre. Proportioned like humans, but with an average height closer to ten feet. King of the Sahndamar family of races, of which mankind was a part. With longer, thicker hair; stronger, denser muscles; and vaster, more acute intelligence.

A score in all, by Torin’s count—difficult to ascertain when his eyes would not focus as he wished them to. They stood in ring formation, tusks bared, weapons drawn, surrounding a pair in the center. Only as Torin neared and slowed his horse’s gait did the walls part to permit him inside.